Current affairs October 2020 - CSEET

• The Reserve Bank of India has set the limits for Ways and Means Advances (WMA) for the second half of the financial year 2020-21 (October 2020 to March 2021) for Central Government at Rs. 1,25,000 crore.

• IDBI Bank has become the first bank in India to have implemented the new feature of document embedding facility with ‘Letter of Credit’ (LC) or ‘Bank Guarantee’ (BG) messages over the Structured Financial Messaging System (SFMS) platform of IFTAS which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India.

• The government kept the interest rates on small savings schemes, including PPF and NSC, unchanged for the October-December quarter amid moderating bank deposit rates

• The RBI has excluded six public sector banks, including OBC and Allahabad Bank, from the Second

Schedule of the RBI Act following their merger with other banks

• The Reserve Bank of India deferred implementation of provisions made under Basel III capital due tomuncertainty related to Covid crisis.

• Reliance Industries Limited and Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL) announced that General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity investor, will invest Rs 3,675 crores into RRVL, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries.

• The Shanghai-based New Development Bank (NDB) has approved USD 741 million loan for two projects in India which includes Mumbai Metro and the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) Project.

• The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has announced a special refinance facility for the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme to promote sustainable and healthy lifestyle in rural areas.

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has approved a three-member interim committee of directors (CoD), to run the private sector lender, Dhanlaxmi Bank, in the capacity of the Managing Director & CEO till a new MD & CEO takes charge.

• Punjab National Bank (PNB) launched a financial inclusion and literacy initiative ‘Gram Sampark Abhiyan’ to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

• With an aim to ease processing of loan applications, the Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra has initiated the Application Programming Interface (API), integration between the PM SVANidhi Portal and the State Bank of India (SBI) portal.

• ‘MSME Prerana’ which is an online business mentoring programme for MSMEs launched by Indian Bank is recently launched by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

• IBM in partnership with the government will create an AI centre of excellence e-marketplace during the inaugural session of RAISE 2020 virtual summit.

• DigitX, India’s first business-to-business (B2B) cryptocurrency trading exchange, began its trading

operations.

• According to World Bank forecast the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected to contract by 9.6 per cent this fiscal.

• As per the Ministry of Home Affairs, the amended Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act came into force on 29 September 2020.

• To warn investors, investing in mutual fund schemes a new “very high risk” category on its Mutual Funds (MF) riskometer tool introduced by the Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

• With an aim to boost solar energy generation capacity in India the Asian Development Bank (ADB) will invest $15 million in Avaada Energy Private Limited (AEPL).

• With an aim to help small and local businesses the technology giant Google has launched a ‘Make Small Strong’ initiative in India.

• The banks’ maximum aggregate retail exposure limit to entities with turnover up to Rs 50 crore to Rs 7.5 crore by Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected the Indian economy to contract by 10.3 percent in 2020-21, from its earlier prediction of -4.5 percent due to rise in Covid cases.

• National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) partnered with EarlySalary launched Salary Card which is a Zero Touch Digital Card.

• RBI to conduct first-ever Open Market Operations (OMO) Purchase of State Government Securities worth Rs. 10,000 crores.

• IDBI Bank will soon launch its banking services on WhatsApp which will be offered through a dedicated WhatsApp verified number ensuring end-to-end encryption, the Bank stated.

• The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of HDFC Bank Aditya Puri, has stepped down.

• Merchant payment platform BharatPe has introduced digital gold product on its platform for merchants in association with Safegold.

• The Union Finance Ministry announced that the central government will borrow Rs 1.1 lakh crore under a special window to meet the shortfall in the Goods and Services Tax compensation.

• Tata group flagship firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) became the most-valuable information technology (IT) company globally, surpassing rival Accenture for the first time.

• The Ministry of Finance has further extended the deadline for filing income tax returns by individual taxpayers for FY 2019-20 by a month till December 31, 2020.

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